Want to Reduce Bullying in Schools? Bring in Babies

Emotional development in schools is integral to the way that students develop academically, and it also sets them up to be responsible, caring citizens once they reach adulthood. Not only that, but having the ability to empathize with others has been shown to reduce aggression in problem children and reduce incidences of bullying in school.
It’s a notion that educator and author Mary Gordon is intimately familiar with. As the founder and executive director of Roots of Empathy, she’s devoted the past two decades to teaching children empathy — specifically by exposing them to babies.
And she’s been wildly successful.
Since its founding in Canada in 1996, the nonprofit has expanded to serve K-8 students in 11 countries, including the U.S., where it’s been established in five states and the District of Columbia. On its surface, the program is simple: It comprises 27 lessons, based around the monthly visits of a volunteer parent, his or her infant, and a Roots of Empathy-trained instructor. With the babies as their “teachers,” the children observe how the parent and the baby interact, and how Mom or Dad responds to the baby’s emotions and needs.
Students learn to identify with the baby’s perspective and how to recognize and label the tiny tot’s feelings. They then become increasingly able to apply that learning to themselves, leading to a better understanding of their own feelings as well as the feelings of their peers.
“What we do know and what the teachers know is that the children really do learn to understand the alphabet of their emotions. And even better, they are able to talk about how they feel,” Gordon tells NationSwell.
And that can translate into a 50 percent reduction in the number of children who pick fights in the classroom.
Other research has confirmed those findings. A study in Northern Ireland showed that kids in a Roots of Empathy program saw improved social behaviors, such as positive communication with other students, and a reduction in “difficult” behavior. Likewise, in a 2005 study by the University of Missouri, researchers found a link between Roots of Empathy’s program and “particularly strong evidence for its potential to reduce aggression and violence.”

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Programs that foster empathy in children can reduce classroom fighting by 50 percent.

The point of the program isn’t to single out specific problem kids prone to bullying, but instead approach the classroom as a whole.
“It’s not medicine; it’s vitamins, and we all need vitamins,” Gordon says. “If you offer a universal program, you head off a lot of trouble, and it’s a benefit that we head off aggression and bullying.”
In their work, the Harvard researchers Jennifer Kahn and Richard Weissbourd have similarly found that the best way to reduce bullying is not by attempting to correct the behavior of one individual, but rather to foster an inclusive, caring school environment. Blogging for HuffPost, Kahn and Weissbourd wrote of their research that “in schools where students reported having more empathy, students also reported fewer experiences of bullying and were more likely to try to stop bullying. Students who reported more empathy also reported fewer experiences of discrimination, threats to physical safety, teasing, and bullying at school.”
Despite the promising research, the U.S. has been slow to implement empathy-based programming and instead leans on punishing alleged bullies — as was the case in Florida earlier this year when two 12-year-old middle school students were charged with cyberstalking after the suicide of one of their classmates.
Gordon says that’s the wrong approach, and the solution lies in building strong connections between students and their peers.
While Roots of Empathy continues to rapidly expand — its program has been implemented in countries as diverse as New Zealand, Germany and Costa Rica — growing it in the U.S. has been more difficult, where a premium is put on standardized tests and grades.
“Here’s the biggest issue in the U.S., is people say to me, ‘I don’t want the program unless it can raise academic scores this year.’ And they say, ‘I’m sorry, it sounds wonderful, but I’ve got to deliver,’” Gordon says. “Obviously we want all children to get an education and a job, but at what cost?”
Seattle was the first U.S. city to adopt the Roots of Empathy model during the 2007-08 school year; today, more than 15,000 children there have gone through the program. Though specific research has yet to measure the efficacy of Seattle’s program, educators have said it’s made a dramatic difference.
“Roots of Empathy provides a unique way to bring out compassion and tenderness in students,” one teacher wrote to Seattle’s Child in 2015. “For kids, Roots of Empathy is a respite from the day-to-day realities of school, and helps them deal with the difficulties and challenges in their home lives, as well. The visits are a breath of fresh air, giving kids a break from the work of academic learning and interactions with peers.”
Melissa Soltani, program manager for Roots of Empathy in Seattle, says that she knew the program was effective after a student confided in her that he had been harboring suicidal thoughts.
“He said he was trying to strangle himself with his belt in the bathroom,” Soltani says. “It was at that moment when I realized that we were creating space to be comfortable and share that with someone.”
And that’s exactly what Gordon is working to implement in more cities and states, if not the entire world.
“This is our solution to building a caring, peaceful and civil society: through children,” she says.

Fighting Cyberbullying Can Be as Easy as Pressing Pause

Rebecca Sedwick was a victim of cyberbullying at the age of 12. Her death sparked a national conversation about how to best address cyberbullying. People began asking how parents could better manage their kids’ digital communications. “I’m aggravated that the parents aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing,” Florida Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told CNN during the investigation into Sedwick’s death.
But Trisha Prabhu, who, inspired by Sedwick’s case, created the anti-bullying app ReThink when she was just 13, found that it wasn’t necessarily the parents’ responsibility to manage their kids’ online presence; rather, it was important for teens themselves to understand that what they say to a peer could be devastating.
“Here we are, giving teenagers this incredible power to communicate as digital citizens. And quite frankly, they’re not really equipped to make those decisions,” Prabhu, now 17, says. Her app uses an algorithm that recognizes and flags offensive language before it’s sent via text message or posted online. “There are severe consequences and lifelong scars when someone is bullied, and cyberspace compounds the effects.”
Numerous studies have shown that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that manages impulse control, develops during teenage years but matures later, when people reach their mid-20s. That lack of impulse control leads to words a teen aggressor might regret. It’s also inspired anti-bullying advocates to find ways to encourage teens to second-guess their online interactions.
Prabhu’s ReThink app, which has been pushed by the Los Angeles Police Department and other organizations, uses an algorithm that is able to recognize and flag offensive language, then halt the message from being sent, allowing the sender a second chance to evaluate what they’ve written.
ReThink’s linguistic models are able to tell the difference between a user complaining about the weather, say, versus a user who’s sending a threat to someone. So for example, typing out “I hate the rain” would not be flagged. But messaging “I hate you,” on the other hand, would trigger the app’s filtering tool, which pops up when the user hits send and asks, “Are you sure you want to post this message?”
The app is invaluable to organizations that have been looking to technology as a disruptor for negative online messaging. Initial trial runs of the app found that 93 percent of teens that use it changed their minds about sending a message. ReThink now has more than 1.1 million users around the U.S.
“All the app does is shoot a question back to you, and it helps give you another filter,” says Jane Clementi, whose son Tyler was a victim of suicide in 2010 after his college roommate outed him by posting a sex video online. “I always tell people to take a breath, reread what they’ve written and if it’s not building someone up, if it’s tearing them down, I would hope that they would reconsider what they’ve written or maybe even discard it.”
Jane and her husband, Joe, started the Clementi Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing the kind of bullying their son endured. The couple has endorsed the ReThink app and appointed Prabhu to the foundation’s board.
“Technology like the ReThink app gives you a second chance,” says Joe. “And you don’t always get a second chance on a lot of things.”
The 2017 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from Oct. 2 to Nov. 2 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
Correction: A previous version of this video incorrectly stated that Trisha Prabhu had already graduated from high school. She is currently a senior in high school. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
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A Second Grader’s Genius Idea Helps Lonely Kids Make Friends

For some kids, the playground can be a big, lonely place.
But last year, Christian Buck, a second grader in York, Penn., came up with a simple, but amazing idea to help kids who don’t know where to go during recess or have anyone to play with.
According to Good News Network, the 8-year-old was shown a photo of a special bench at a German school where lonely kids can go to so that other children can befriend them. The young man liked what he saw, and he decided to tell his teacher and his principal at Roundtown Elementary about it, and they thought it was a great addition for the playground. Soon after, the Buddy Bench was born.
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Six months later, Christian’s school project has turned into somewhat of a movement (check out this map of Buddy Benches across the nation). There are also Buddy Benches in schools around Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Italy and Canada, the York Daily Record reports. The newest one just popped up in Lake Superior Primary and Intermediate School in Ashland, Wis.
“It helps the kids who see others on the Buddy Bench, to enable them to approach and ask them to play,” Intermediate School Counselor Kelly Sundeen tells Ashland’s Daily Press. “It also tells the kids on the bench that it is OK to say ‘I need someone to play with.’”
The bench is also a powerful anti-bullying tool that allows teachers and administrators to teach students to be kind to others and not ostracize schoolmates that sit on the bench. “It really builds their self-esteem to ask others to play with them,” Sundeen adds.
Christian has since given speeches in California and Connecticut about his wonderful idea.
“The idea of the Buddy Bench is to allow others to meet and play with new friends or old friends,” Christian explains in this video. “We show we care about others when we ask others to play.”
Isn’t it nice to be nice?

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Confiding Isn’t Scary; It’s the Key to Feeling Safe for These Students

“If you really knew me, this is what you’d know.”
At the Freire Charter School in Philadelphia, that was the prompt given to two dozen students as they stood before 500 peers, sharing personal stories and intimate details about their lives. The concept sounds intimidating, but it is how Freire school officials create a campus environment of empathy and community among its students and prevent future violence and tragedy.
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“When a community can come together and celebrate the humanity in each of our kids,” said school head Kelly Davenport, “that gives each and every one of our students the right just to be who they are, and to make that OK.”

Violent outbursts often stem from feeling isolated, Davenport explains, and creating a public forum such as this lets students know they’re not alone in their struggles. The goal of these sharing assemblies is to give students a means of expressing themselves without feeling judged or criticized, school organizer Dave Shahriari told NPR.

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“Kids have a lot to say, and I thought it could be really humanizing and helpful for the school as a community if they could say it in a safe space in front of each other,” he adds.

Elijah, a tenth-grader, was among the dozen students to share his story at the nearby Unitarian church (the school does not have an auditorium large enough to accommodate its students). He explained he was fortunate to have a support network of friends and a good relationship with his grandmother — but that he is often troubled with depression and has thoughts of suicide.

Upon his confession, Elijah implored his classmates who really care about him and his issues to stand up. The church roared with a standing ovation. Weeks later, Elijah still feels the love.

“They hug me or they give me a handshake, and then they was telling me stories like, ‘Yeah, I know what you was dealing with. I went through the same thing,'” he said.

Another tenth-grader, Tyshierra, revealed that behind her humor and lighthearted personality, there’s a story of loss and hurt. The West Philly native confessed to classmates that her mother was a drug dealer and was allegedly strangled to death by her boyfriend.

Shortly thereafter, Tyshierra’s father passed away of liver cancer. After a whirlwind of meetings with child protection caseworkers and participating in counseling programs, she and her siblings were finally taken in by their aunt.

“Losing my mother was my biggest fear,” she said. “Since that has already happened, I fear nothing and no one. Ya’ll see me as goofy, funny or whatever else, but deep down inside, I’m hurting for the way my life is.”

But even Tyshierra has felt the powerful effects of the brave choice to share her story with her peers.

Before the assembly, “everybody just was like, ‘OK, we at school,’ ” Tyshierra said. “But now, it’s like we feel like a family, like we know all that about each other.”

Perhaps it helped that the students divulged their secrets in the calm sanctuary of a church. But regardless of the location, it’s empowering to see a school that’s making its students feel safe with something other than added security or more metal detectors.

Watch How This Boy With Autism Renders His Class Speechless

Like any other kid on the planet, Jake is just a boy who wants friends. Unfortunately, his differences (he has autism) make him a walking target to bullies at school.
But one day during gym class, Jake did one of the most powerful things that few would have the same courage to do: He spoke up.
In the moving video from UpWorthy, Jake delivers a message that’s exactly what his classmates needed to hear.
“I don’t think you guys see me for me. I just think you guys see me as a big target,” Jake says as his eyes well with tears. “I want to try to be your friend but you don’t try to be mine…and that really makes me feel bad that you don’t really want to know me.”
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Jake’s message is an invitation for us all to talk about bullying, as any child across the country could be in the same situation as he, whether their families know about it or not. In fact, 3.2 million students in the U.S. are victims of bullying each year, and if things aren’t handled correctly, bullying can turn tragic, as demonstrated in the 2011 documentary Bully, which followed the lives of five kids who faced bullying on a daily basis. The film particularly focused on 11-year-old Ty Smalley and 17-year-old Tyler Long, who took their own lives because they were fed up with bullying.
Happily, Jake, who’s now a junior in high school, told UpWorthy that things are getting much better at school.
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“Bullying has had a big impact on my life, but since the movie I’ve made a lot of friends. Recently, I have joined my high school football team! At first I thought they would all be complete jerks, but actually they are pretty cool guys and have helped me through a lot of situations — they stand up for me!”
“For other kids with autism, if you’re getting bullied, try and tell them to stop and not give a reaction — if that doesn’t work, go to an adult. It might seem hard cause we can’t handle stress as well as other kids, but you will get through it and you’ll be awesome — actually you already are!”
Who’s our new hero? Clearly, it’s Jake.
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Meet the Proud Mother Who Takes On a Cyberbully With Harsh Words but Forgiveness, Too

For all the wonderful things the Internet gives us — global communication, information at our fingertips, the opportunity to spread awareness — there’s also an awful flip side to the technology. And that’s the people who use the web to deliberately attack one another with a few simple (often, anonymous) keystrokes.
Unfortunately, Megan Davies Mennes, a mother of a one-year-old son with Down Syndrome, knows this all too well.
After the English teacher and blogger posted an Instagram photo of her son Quinn (who had just recovered from a week-long bout of illness) with the hashtag #downsyndrome, an anonymous commenter named @JusesCrustHD wrote, “Ugly.”
But Mennes didn’t let this cyber bully have the last word, writing a powerful open letter that was recently picked up by the Huffington Post. In her correspondence, she calls out the user for purposely seeking out the hashtag to make derogatory comments behind the anonymity of a screen name.
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The whole letter is definitely worth the read, but here is where she hits the nail on the head as to why Internet trolls aren’t worth anyone’s time or emotional distress: “I recognize that you want to see me get worked up about your little ‘joke.’ I’ll be honest; it’s hard not to be angry about it, but I can’t allow myself to carry that weight on my shoulders. I can’t allow myself to feel anything but sorry for an individual with so little tact. Because in end, you will be the one to face the consequences of your choices someday. There are few people in this world who tolerate that kind of backwards thinking, and you’ll eventually mouth off to the wrong person. My guess is that you already have, which is why you hide behind a screen name.”
She continues, “God knows there were plenty of cruel adolescent boys in my time: boys who took pleasure in pranks and jokes at others’ expense. There were even a few of them that were directed at me, but it gave me tough skin and I grew from the experience of facing such mistreatment. Maybe that’s why I’m willing to let this one go; I know where most of those boys ended up, and it’s nowhere I’d want to be. And as a teacher, I’ve seen kids like you crash and burn. Go outside. Read a book. Compliment someone. Most importantly, enlighten yourself; there’s already enough cruelty in this world, and anyone worth their salt should be striving to make this place better, not worse.”
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In the end, Mennes takes the high road and wishes the user the best: “I simply hope my own children learn to look past ignorant comments and actions and treat others with respect and dignity. We all deserve it, even you.”

Once the Target of Bullies, This Teen With Tourettes Is Making Sure No Other Kid Suffers

Jaylen Arnold knows exactly what it’s like to be attacked for being a little different. The Lakeland, Florida boy was born with Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes him to involuntarily tic and make sounds. He also has Aspergers Syndrome and severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Unfortunately, his differences made him a target of bullies. As Yahoo! Shine reports, the teasing got so bad he had to be taken out of school. But instead of suffering silently, when he was only 8-years-old, Jaylen decided that he had nothing to be ashamed of and that the bullies would never get to him. He also wanted to make sure no other kid—especially ones with disabilities—would go through what he did.
With the help from his friends and family, Jaylen launched his own charity, the Jaylen’s Challenge Foundation, to put an end to bullying through education and urging tolerance.
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“Once kids are educated about it, they won’t bully so much,” Jaylen writes on his website. “I put it to the test with the class at the school I attended here for a few months. It was a huge success! You should have seen all the kids coming up to me that use to make fun and copy me. They were actually telling me they were sorry!”
Now 13, Jaylen makes appearances at schools across the country to help banish bullying. According to Yahoo!, the seventh-grader has spoken to more than 60,000 kids, in the hopes that his message will create a domino effect of change.
“I’m trying to make the world a better place in any way that I can, because if I can help one person, then that person can help someone else, and then that person can help someone else,” Jaylen said. “We all come together to end bullying.”
Jaylen’s mission to stamp out bullying has already received national attention. As you can see in the video below, he recently received a $10,000 check from talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres to help him in his cause.
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This Anti-Bullying Video Teaches Us the Power of Two Simple Words

“There’s enough heartache and sorrow in this life without our adding to it through our own stubbornness, bitterness and resentment.” That’s the message of Mormon leader Dieter F. Uchtdorf in a powerful new video that aims to put an end to bullying.
The short film, created Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and starring Utah teens, strikes a modern chord because it depicts high school students as victims of cyber-bullying, a behavior that’s unfortunately becoming more and more common. In 2011, the National Crime Prevention Council found that cyber-bullying affects almost half of all American teens. And sadly, the consequences can be quite serious. A new study published by the journal JAMA Pediatrics, found that children who have been cyber-bullied are three times as likely than other kids to have thoughts of suicide. As the Los Angeles Times reports, between 5 and 8 percent of American teenagers try to kill themselves each year.
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In the video, Uchtdorf teaches us the two simple but powerful words that we all should know when it comes to bullying: “When it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following – stop it.” Those words couldn’t be any more true today.

The Brilliant But Simple Way This Teacher Stops Bullying

How can you know when a child needs help, but is too afraid to speak up? For one exceptional teacher, all it took was a simple classroom activity, says mommy blogger Glennon Doyle Melton in a now-viral Momastery post.
Here’s how it works: Each Friday afternoon, this unnamed teacher asks her class to write down on paper the names of four students whom they’d like to sit next to, and one “exceptional classroom citizen.” The students then hand their list to the teacher.
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So what’s the point of this exercise? The teacher isn’t arbitrarily shaking up seating arrangements — she’s actually trying to immediately identify which kids aren’t getting mentioned, which kids were mentioned in one week but not the next, or which kids can’t even think of any friends to write down. “She’s pinning down — right away — who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying,” wrote Melton, whose son, Chase, is one of the teacher’s students.
The teacher has used this method every week since the tragic Columbine shootings as a way to spot and fix problems in her students early on. “This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION,” Melton writes. “All outward violence begins as inner loneliness.” The post was shared more than 1 million times less than a day after it went up and has touched the hearts of many more. If you scan the comments section, you’ll find that other teachers and even entire schools want to try out this technique, too. It just might be the start of something big.

This Transgender Athlete Is Taking on Bullying, One School at a Time

Kye Allums, a former Division I guard for the George Washington Colonials women’s basketball team, struggled with bullies in high school. Students made fun of Allums, who now identifies as a man, for not being a “normal girl,” and would even knock food out of his hands at lunch. But now Allums is a full-time public speaker, traveling the country to address K-12 schools, colleges and corporations about acceptance and inclusion for transgender people. He sits down with bullies and their victims at schools to help them better understand each other. Once, he even received an email from a student thanking Allums for helping the student realize how his actions affected the classmate he was bullying. “That was one of the best days of my life,” Allums told TakePart. “Nobody deserves to be hurt just because you don’t understand them.” While traveling, Allums is also sharing others’ stories for the organization I Am Enough, which supports people through their transition to another gender. Allums funds all of the expenses for the project out of his own pocket and with a Go Fund Me fundraising page; he hopes it will increase visibility and awareness for the LGBT community. “Anyone can be an advocate: Simply stand up and speak out against injustice. Show anyone who is ignorant and unkind that it’s not OK.”

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